The day after my implosion is Sunday. I wake up with a pit in my stomach, and Megan and I don’t talk when she comes to get her stuff from my place. The pit has more to do with the fact that I have to go into work tomorrow, but my current situation with the opposite sex isn’t exactly helping things.

I tell myself this issue with Megan will sort itself out. I do laundry, hit the grocery store, and watch football on the couch, glancing down at my phone every so often to see if she’s texted me. I don’t feel as though I’ve done anything wrong, and I don’t want to be the one who caves and texts first. At the moment, Megan and I are a couple of gunslingers at the O.K. Corral, and the first one who blinks is going to lose the upper hand.

It’s a funny thing about situations like this one — there are moments where it’s freeing to know that no one is looking for you. No one is wondering what you’re doing at any given moment other than maybe your mother whom you haven’t called in a week.

But that knowledge that you’re free to do whatever you please is also a bit depressing, isn’t it? Doesn’t Megan care about how I felt last night? Is she not even going to explain herself? Why isn’t she trying to bust my door down to apologize and maybe have reconciliation sex? These are the questions I ask myself as I watch the Detroit Lions lose yet another football game.

Megan doesn’t attempt to contact me all day, and I take her silence as an admission of guilt. The work week goes by surprisingly fast, and I’m so busy during the day that even though I really want to Gchat or text her I simply don’t have time. I keep my head down Monday through Thursday without talking to or hearing from her and when I wake up on Friday, I tell myself that none of this was meant to be and that I’m better off for it.

By 10:00 a.m. that Friday morning, I am absolutely zooming from a medium Dunkin’ Donuts black coffee and I officially have the itch. I want to get drunk with my friends and put last weekend in the rearview, so I hop in a group chat with some characters who enjoy getting down and arrange for a meeting of the minds at a bar that has good chicken wings. I get home from work energized. I change my clothes, put some gel in my hair, and I even wear a little cologne despite the fact that I’m meeting up with 5 dudes to eat chicken wings and french fries in a dimly lit bar. You never know, right?

By 8:30 p.m. I’ve eaten somewhere between 12 and 20 chicken wings. I’m feeling fairly disgusted with myself as I stuff french fries into my mouth and choke down my fourth or fifth Bud Light of the evening. My hands are covered with buffalo sauce and ranch dressing, and I know that soon I’ll no longer be able to drink beer. I simply don’t have the room.

We pay our bill and go to another bar down the street, which is where I begin to order vodka sodas. I haven’t looked at my phone since I sat down to eat chicken wings, and when I pull it out of my pocket at the second bar I’m really hoping that a text message from Megan is waiting for me. It’s not.

No one has texted me since I last checked my phone, and while the urge to text her has never been stronger than it is in this moment with a vodka soda in hand, I know that if I text her now I lose the upper hand. I hold the power button down on my iPhone, and five seconds later I swipe right to shut it down for the evening. I’m going rogue, and the last thing I need on this Friday night out with my friends is the temptation to text a girl who doesn’t give a shit about me..

Duda, isn’t this the girl who sided with her snotty, bougie friend when you very accidentally spilled a drink on her (even though it was her fault)? Come on, now. Although it may be cuffing season, there are much, much better options out there. Chin up.